The Bangalore Bridge

A Different Kind of Digital Dream

The Hospital Information System was about the inside of the hospital: registration counters, wards, labs, and bills. It was about the patient’s journey from village to bedside and back.

But around the same time, another digital dream began to take shape, quieter but equally transformative.

What would MGIMS look like to the outside world?

In the year 2000, the internet was still new in India. In a place like Sevagram, it felt almost mythical. Most people had not sent an email. Very few had seen a website. The word “online” belonged to cities, not to a rural medical college built on Gandhian simplicity.

Yet, the need was real.

Students applying for admission wanted information quickly. Alumni scattered across India and abroad wanted a way to stay connected. Parents wanted results without anxiety. People wanted to know what MGIMS stood for, beyond the rumours and the brochures.

We needed a public face.

And we had no IT department to build it.

An Alumnus in Bengaluru

The first bridge came from Bengaluru.

Dr. Avita Pereira, an MGIMS alumnus from the 1990 batch, had moved there after her internship. She and her husband, Dr. Johnson, shared a strong interest in technology. While many doctors saw computers as a distraction, they saw them as tools.

One day, Avita reached out with an offer that felt both generous and improbable.

“We want to build a website for MGIMS.”

There was no contract, no consultancy fee, no corporate pitch. It was simply an alumnus looking back at her institute and wanting to give something that would last.

For months, Avita and Johnson worked on the code and design, translating the lived reality of Sevagram into something that could sit on a screen. It was not easy. A hospital is not a neat institution. It is messy, alive, always changing. Capturing it in static pages required patience.

On October 2, 2000, Gandhi Jayanti, the MGIMS website went live: www.mgims.com.

By today’s standards, it would look simple, even primitive. But for us, it was a door opening.

The First Impact

The website’s biggest early gift was practical.

It published entrance exam results online.

Until then, students waited for letters, phone calls, and rumours. Parents travelled to campus just to confirm whether a name was on a list. The stress was enormous, and it spread like fever through towns and villages.

Putting results online changed that overnight. Students could check from anywhere that had an internet connection, even if that meant a cyber-café with slow machines and a queue of impatient teenagers.

Within six months, the website recorded nearly 25,000 visitors.

That number may not impress anyone today, but in 2000, for a rural medical college, it was astonishing. It meant that Sevagram had become searchable. It meant that people who had never stepped into Wardha could now see the institute’s name and story.

We had created a “Virtual Sevagram.”

The Hard Part: Keeping It Alive

Launching a website is easy. Sustaining it is the real test.

Over time, the original site needed upgrading. Technology moved faster than our capacity. Pages became outdated. Links broke. New needs emerged: online applications, alumni databases, faculty research pages, departmental updates.

We tried several ways to revive it.

Ashwini, then a medical student, created a preliminary website for the Department of Medicine. Later, we worked with a group of his colleagues, including Ramashish Bhutada, Nikhilesh Ghushe, and Akhilesh Mritunjai. Ramashish went on to found Deusco Technologies in Mumbai. Between 2006 and 2010, I exchanged many emails with him, hoping we could build a more comprehensive portal.

We even paid for a system audit in 2007, believing that an expert evaluation would lead to a leap forward.

But many of these initiatives stalled. Not because people lacked talent, but because the demands of hospital life are relentless. Projects that do not scream for attention tend to fade. The website began to feel like a half-built house: the address existed, but the rooms were unfinished.

In November 2008, we took a small but important step. We purchased the official academic domain: www.mgims.ac.in from ERNET India.

We had the right name.
Now we needed the right home.

The Family Project (2015)

The revival finally came in 2015, and it came from within the family.

By then, Ashwini had grown from a curious student into a professional who understood systems. He decided to rebuild the website from scratch. Not as a hobby, but as a serious institutional project.

And he did not do it alone.

Shaily, my daughter-in-law, joined him. Their partnership gave the project its balance. Ashwini brought structure, logic, and technical architecture. Shaily brought design sense, content clarity, and the human feel that prevents a website from becoming a cold directory.

At home, our conversations shifted. Dinner table talk moved from clinical cases and ward politics to navigation menus, subdomains, and the question that always matters in design: how does a user find what they need in two clicks?

They studied medical school websites across the world. Not to imitate them blindly, but to understand what works. What looks elegant. What feels intuitive. What respects the visitor’s time.

They agreed on a simple philosophy: Information. Design. Simplicity.

In February 2015, the new MGIMS website went live. It was clean, functional, and modern. It carried the institute’s story without clutter. It made essential information accessible without drama.

For me, watching them work was strangely moving. It was not just a technical project. It was a continuation of a larger family habit: building systems that reduce friction for ordinary people.

The Intramail Revolution

While the website became our public face, another digital shift was brewing quietly inside the campus.

In 2008, Ashwini, still an intern, noticed something that all of us had accepted without question: the tyranny of paper circulars. Notices printed, pinned, photocopied, misplaced, ignored, rediscovered.

He found that Google Apps for Education offered free institutional email services. He applied, verified MGIMS as an educational institute, and secured approval.

This one step saved the institute a large amount of money in licensing fees. But more importantly, it changed how people communicated.

On October 7, 2009, he wrote to me, brimming with excitement:

“I am testing the MGIMS intramail on Google apps, and it is working flawlessly! The familiar and simple Gmail UI makes it even better… The only hurdle is the internet line… Please start the official process of obtaining the leased line as soon as possible (now!).”

He also pushed for a larger dream, the next iteration of HIS:

“With 2.0, we must think big… A HIS system that’s unimaginable and clearly the best internationally. Ease of use and spectrum of use both need to be widened to reach that goal.”

I replied instantly, because some enthusiasm is contagious:

“Fantastic ideas! Your enthusiasm is palpable! Go ahead – I will talk to the KHS management.”

In May 2009, Intramail began rolling out. Slowly at first. Some faculty were away. Some were indifferent. But once the Medical Superintendent began emailing circulars instead of printing them, the shift became irreversible.

A student could email the Dean.
A resident could email a consultant.
A department could send a notice without paper, peons, or delay.

The campus became lighter, faster, and less wasteful.

Today, when I log into an @mgims.ac.in email address, I often remember that moment: an intern urging his father to act “now,” without delay. It reminds me that in Sevagram, innovation often comes not from expensive consultants, but from people who belong to the place and care enough to improve it.

Sevagram, Still Sevagram

Looking back, the HIS and the website were not separate stories. They were two arms of the same instinct.

One was about making the hospital safer, faster, and fairer for patients.
The other was about making the institute visible, reachable, and connected.

Neither was perfect. Both demanded patience. Both went through wilderness years. Both survived because enough people refused to let them die quietly.

And through all of it, Sevagram remained Sevagram.
A place where the roads could still be dusty, where the wards could still be crowded, but where the idea of progress was not treated as a luxury.

It was treated as a responsibility.

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